The present invention relates generally to patient handling devices, such as beds, stretchers, wheelchairs, and the like, and more particularly to equipment for assisting in the movement of such devices.
Modern health care facilities utilize a wide variety of patient handling devices. Examples of such devices include beds, stretchers, cots, surgery tables, wheelchairs, bed-chairs, and other types of devices that are designed to help support a patient. Most of these devices include one or more wheels that enable them to be pushed throughout different areas of a health care facility, such as a hospital, a nursing home, an assisted living center, or other environments where such devices are used. In some prior art devices, the patient handling devices have included one or more motors that help provide motive force to one or more of the wheels that move the patient handling device. Such motors ease the load that caregivers and other personnel must exert on the patient handling device when the device is moved to different locations.
Patient handling devices equipped with motors that assist in the movement of the devices often include one or more controls that are positioned at one end of the device. When the controls are appropriately manipulated, the device starts moving. In order to stop the device, the caregiver must deactivate the appropriate control. In some situations, the device can be stopped by releasing pressure from a handle, switch, or other safety device that acts as a sort of dead-man's switch. However initiated, the deactivation often does not cause an immediate stopping of the device, but rather allows the device to continue to coast forward and come to a more gradual stop. The gradual stop may allow the patient handling device to continue forward for a distance greater than the length of the device. This lack of an immediate stop helps prevent a patient, who may be riding on the device, from experiencing disruptive acceleration forces.